Master Thesis: Enhancement of Flow Solver for Transonic Turbomachine Flows

Situation:

MAN Energy Solution (MAN-ES) is a leading manufacturer of industrial compressors. MAN-ES’s range of goods includes complete marine propulsion systems, turbomachinery units for heat pumps, the oil & gas as well as the process industries and complete power plant solutions. An important Research and Development center of MAN-ES is located in Zurich, Switzerland, where centrifugal compressors are developed and manufactured. The design of new compressor stages is done with INVENTUM, an integrated in-house CAE tool for geometry modeling and CFD analysis. A core element of INVENTUM is a streamline curvature flow solver, used in the early design phase  to quickly assess the aerodynamic performance of blade rows or entire stages. In the past years, a new solver has been implemented at MAN-ES. However, the method does not meet all requirements yet. In particular, no handling of shocks in transonic flow conditions is possible, which excludes the treatment of turbines and highly loaded, transonic compressors so far.

Work:

• Enhancement of the flow solver for transonic and choked flows.
• Implementation of additional loss and mixing models.
• Integration of flow deviation models for various blade types.
• Implementation of automated performance map calculation.

Setting:

Master thesis in a small team of R&D engineers at our Zurich city office during 6 months, starting from Spring 2024.

Tasks:

Under the guidance of the INVENTUM project manager and a flow solver specialist (principal expert at MAN-ES and honorary professor at RWTH Aachen University), as well as the software developers from a small local IT company that implements the INVENTUM GUI:

• Elaboration of the fundamentals for the extension of the method to shock-loaded transonic flows.
• Implementation of the extension in the flow solver.
• Literature study and implementation of loss and mixing models, as well as flow deviation (slip) models for various types of turbomachines (centrifugal and axial compressors and turbines).
• Comparison of flow solver results with (existing) 3D Navier Stokes simulations for selected turbomachine stages.
• Implementation of an automated calculation of entire performance maps and comparison to existing test data.

The student will be placed during the entire thesis at the R&D Fluid Dynamics group of the Engineering Department at Zurich. Guided tours to the facilities (workshop and test beds) at Zurich will be organized. An appropriate salary for students is a matter of course for us.

Required Skills:

Mechanical engineering master student with

• Specialization in numerical fluid dynamics and/or turbomachinery.
• Sound programming knowledge in C++.
• Preferably knowledge in C# and .NET GUI programming.